In former numbers, I have referred the reader to various authorities, upon this interesting subject. I will offer a brief quotation from a sensible writer--"According to the present usage, as soon as the semblance of death appears, the chamber is deserted, by friends, relatives, and physicians, and the apparently dead, though frequently living, body is committed to the management of an ignorant or unfeeling nurse, whose care extends no further than laying the limbs straight, and securing her accustomed perquisites. The bed clothes are immediately removed, and the body is exposed to the air. This, _when cold_, must extinguish any spark of life, that may remain, and which, by a different treatment, might have been kindled into a flame; or it may only continue to repress it, and the unhappy person revive amidst the horrors of the tomb."--"Coldness, heaviness of the body, a leaden, livid color, with a yellowness in the visage," says the same author, "are all very uncertain signs." Mr. Zimmerman observed them all, upon the body of a criminal, who fainted, through the dread of the punishment he had merited. He was shaken, dragged about, and turned, in the same manner dead bodies are, without the least sign of resistance: and yet, at the end of twenty-four hours, he was recalled to life, by means of volatile alkali. In 1777, Dr. William Hawes, the founder of the Humane Society in London, published an address, on premature interment. This is a curious and valuable performance. I cannot here withhold the statement, that this excellent man, before the formation of the Humane Society, for several years, offered rewards, and paid them from his own purse, for the rescue of persons from drowning, between Westminster and London bridge. Dr. Hawes remarks, that the appearance of death has often been mistaken for the reality, in apoplectic, and fainting fits, and those, arising from any violent agitation of the mind, and from the free use of opium and spirituous liquors. Children, he observes, have often been restored, who have apparently died in convulsions. In case of fevers, in weak habits, or when the cure has been chiefly attempted, by means of depletion, the patient often sinks into a state, resembling death; and the friends, in the opinion of Dr. Hawes, have been fatally deceived. In small pox, he remarks, when the pustules sink, and death apparently ensues, means of restoration should by no means be neglected.